


impending doom

by suicides



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Nico, M/M, References to Depression, Take my trash, but tomorrow's trash day isnt it, i wrote this so long ago, its like 12 am what am i doing reposting old stuff, nico is an artist whos struggling with a lot, nico is really depressed honestly, will is a surfer boy and all his siblings are cool, will is nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-07-13 01:54:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7133816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suicides/pseuds/suicides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will likes long walks on the beach and it makes Nico's chest ache. </p>
<p>[alternatively, Nico learns that maybe he isn't doomed to be forever alone]</p>
            </blockquote>





	impending doom

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote rhis in december and wanted to share my trash with the interweb

All Nico can really think about is the curve of Will's nose. How it refuses to come out right on a piece of paper, and how even in pictures it doesn't seem to mimic the exact curve of its real life counterpart. It reminds him or Percy's eyes, in the sense that it's too ethereal to be captured by something as diluted as art. 

But what was so great about a goddamn nose? You may wonder. Nico doesn't know. 

*

"Have you ever broken your nose before?" Nico asks one day as they're walking hand in hand down a sun baked beach, toes burning in the grainy texture of the sand. He doesn't know why he accepted Will's invitation to go to the ocean with him, but he did, and here he is. Walking hand in hand with a boy that embodies the sun.

"Once, yeah." Will smiles like the stars, Nico would later realize late at night when he can't sleep, can't draw, can't breathe and all he has is the memories of a yesterday best left forgotten. "Why do you ask?"

"Mm," Nico hums. "No reason."

But there is a reason, of course there's a reason (there's always a reason when it came to Nico; he wasn't a free spirit who did what he did to simply be content with life. No, everything had a motive and he hated himself for that) and Will knows this, he knows but he doesn't comment on it and instead starts chatting idly about the tide and how (one day) he's going to teach Nico how to surf and then they can both go out into the surf without fear (but Nico could never live without the fear).

*

It's bad, Nico realizes suddenly as he sits in his shower, the water pouring down over him and pooling in the tub. He does this a lot, sits in the shower under the spray of the water and thinks. 

It's horrible, his mind corrects almost immediately. Nico can't help but agree with his subconscious because it's true, isn't it? It's terrible, and it's true, and it's dangerous, but Nico really can't help himself, can he? 

*

It's stupid.

Here he is, sitting cross legged on a bed in another boys' room, chewing his lip and counting the grains of sand pooling in a little dip of the sheet. Will is sitting across from him, mirroring him in every way except for the splitting grin on his face (Nico's cheeks ache just looking at it). They've been sitting like this for thirty minutes, maybe, and Nico doesn't know why he's enjoying it as much as he is despite being completely uncomfortable.

It's like listening to your favorite song while riding the bus to school, bouncing and sliding and gripping the seat to keep yourself steady all the while a calming tune cuts through the chaos. (In this metaphor, Will is the tune and Nico's thoughts are the chaos)

*

They hold hands a lot more, in school. Will walks Nico to his art class every Monday through Thursday (his older brothers always pick him up early on Fridays to go surfing), kisses his cheek right outside the door at an angle where nobody can tell whether or not it's a friendly whisper in the ear or a romantic display of affection. 

Nico keeps trying to draw Will's nose. He manages, but then there's the matter of his eyes. (The color is simple, really, it's never been an issue to mix sky blue with Caribbean Sea) It's the curves and the crinkles at the corners and the squint when he smiles, how they go against everything his eighth grade teacher ever taught him about facial structure and muscle and skin.

*

He gives up on drawing Will. It's too much, too painstaking, too much like drawing Percy that it makes him want to hurl (because while he and Will do not look alike, their eyes do the same squinty thing when he smiles and his lips are the same shade of kiss bruised pink after a long walk on the beach).

He instead focuses on not shaking half as much when they hold hands in the school parking lot, after Will's brothers have just dropped them off and it's quiet for about two minutes before the public buses start to pull in (Nico stopped riding the bus two weeks ago, when Will offered him a space in the Solace family truck). 

His plan doesn't exactly work, but Will doesn't mind his shaking palms, or the sweat that accumulates in the spaces between their fingers as he swings their hands far and wide between them.

*

It's like a love story, Nico muses one afternoon as Will leads them onto the roof during third period, a grin like a cat painted across his face. A stupid, cliche, love story. He's lead to a spot Will believes no one can see from the floor, and then he's kissed like he's a princess in a fairytale, his leg doing the traditional bend as their lips meet softly in the humid, too warm air of a May afternoon. 

Later, after reality caught up to them and slapped them in the face, screeching, idiots! People can see you from the third floor! They'd giggled like fools as they were dragged to the office, made to call their parents and confess (Will did so gleefully, and Nico could practically hear the Solace brothers' whoops and hollers from his seat across the room).

Nico had never felt happier than he did in that moment, with Will's mirthful gaze settled upon him and his own cheeks burning with affection and contentment.

*

The fun ends too soon (of course it does, when had fun ever lasted longer than a millisecond in a di Angelos life?) and Nico is swarmed in a torrent of suffocation. 

Will doesn't understand, (Nico doesn't expect him to) but he tries to. He brings him to his house and kisses the pace between his eyebrow and eyelid, a moment of intimacy that leaves Nico sobbing and dissolving until he is nothing and everything at the same time, until he is stripped of flesh and bone and lain bare before the boy who he loves, until he is a shaking, clammy mess that stumbles out of the house hours later, eyes swollen and cheeks flushed from crying.

His eyelids still burn from where Will kissed him.

*

Weeks later, Nico will hug Will and hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. 

He will scribble crappy metaphors and poetry and one-liners that would make Apollo (his sappy, poetry obsessed English I teacher) so very proud. He'll doodle the layout of his face over and over again on the corner of worksheets and homework and notebook paper until he finally gets it right. He will allow himself to smile whenever a thought of the blonde haired boy crosses his mind. (People notice how much he's been changing. A junior, Jason Grace, commented on it one day at lunch. "I've never seen you so... So elated." (Jason is a theater nerd, who lives and breathes fancy words). Nico simply responded with "I've never felt this elated.")

*

"I like you a lot," Nico will gush on the last day of school, when all the freshman are crowed in the hallways, counting down in a mantra that seems to drown out everything else, but Will manages to catch his words.

He'll smile wide, eyes crinkling at the corners like Nico had seen him do so many times, and he'll say, "I love you," like its the simplest and easiest thing in the world. And then he'll kiss Nico, gently, just as the last bell of the year rings and Nico faintly hears everyone screaming in joy around him. 

He sighs into the kiss. Just like the movies.

**Author's Note:**

> gee boy howdy that was gay
> 
> chat with my on tumblr @inkspiltt


End file.
